Music Performance Ethnography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Music Performance Ethnography - Essay Example The Ultra Music Festival Background to the festival The ultra music festival is an outdoor music event that gets held in the city of Miami in Florida. It is a music festival that entails a weekend of electronic music at the Bayfront Park in Miami. The event gets held on the second weekend of every March in every year. The event takes three days from Friday to Sunday. This year the event took place in two consecutive weekends as a way of celebrating its 15th anniversary (Cohn 46). The Ultra Music Festival got started by two business partners, Rusell Faibsich and Alex Omes in 1999. In its inauguration year, the event got held for one day on the south beach in Miami. In the following year, it got relocated to Bayfront Park in the city of Miami. This was due to the large number of people who attended the first event. The event gets sponsored by the Winter Music Conference. During the festival in this year, I happened to have attended one of the two weekends during which it got held. The performers The performers at the ultra music festival were well over 200. They wore civilian clothes but the art in their design could be recognized. As it is with many musicians, the aspect of standing different from others could also be traced. Overall, the performers dressed in a way that it was easy identifying them among the audience as they sought to get an interactive platform with the audience. Prior to their individual performance, the performers looked relaxed, probably reserving their energy for the electric performers each was to hold (Scott & David 21). Some of the performers had come from outside the USA. However, most of them were local artists. The diversity of the performers had an added advantage to the festival. Among the performers were DJs who took turns in the work. All the performers could be said to be established musicians and top DJs in the country. Establishing them by names could, however, be difficult considering their numbers. The event involved the use of live per formance instruments. These instruments got changed with time depending on the performing artist. There were also music systems installed at strategic positions all over the Bayfront Park (Schmidt & Gretchen 198). The park at some point looked like a collection of an electronic factory. Some performers came with their instruments on stage while others used the ones already installed on the stage. Vocal music got included in the performances. Most of the lyrics seemed to have a message for the audience. Most of them praised the different successful people in the city of Miami. They are those that condemned the social crimes in the city. Some could even be seen to be going to the extent of narrating personal experiences on the difficulty experienced by the poor in the USA. There is also another category of music that praised the music festival itself as the greatest on the planet. Whether this is correct or not, it cannot be clearly established. The Audience The size of the audience c ould be approximated to be well over 330,000 according to figures released immediately after the festival. The audience got made to the larger extent by the residents of Miami. There were also people from other states in the USA. The event attracted some foreigners. The culture of the people at the festival could, therefore, be described as very diverse. Several cases of social misbehavior could be noted.